Woke Up Married
by cheysiu
Summary: "Gunther, we got married at-at Elvis's Chapel O' Love and Rainbows. And you're fine with that?"
1. Chapter 1

Gunther woke up fuzzier than usual-his first thought was, oh no, if I have a cold we'll have to postpone rehearsal. His mouth was dry, and his head was all tight and achy, like somebody had poured sand inside it when he wasn't looking. He rubbed his eyes, wincing a little, and tried to focus on the ceiling.

It took him a minute to remember where he was. In a hotel, sure, but he was always in a hotel, and there was nothing like four years of touring with the best dance crew in the world to make you lose track of which one you were in. Vegas, probably-yeah, they'd had the Shake It Up! Chicago reunion show to kick off the new season, and he'd come out early to spend some time with CeCe and the gang, and holy crap wait a second he was naked.

Gunther sat straight up, a move that jerked the covers down the bed and made the equally naked person next to him look up and blink in the sudden sunlight, and—

"Gunther?" CeCe Jones said blearily. "What're you doing in my room?"

"Oh, no," Gunther said, and fell out of bed.

He landed mostly on his side, with one foot and arm still tangled in the covers. He fought his way out of them.

CeCe's head appeared over the side of the bed. "Gunther?"

"Still here." Still naked. Oh, he was in so much trouble.

"Come back up here." CeCe reached a hand down. "This is Vegas, I don't think you should be sprawled out on the carpet."

A flash of memory from the night before hit him, and he felt all the blood draining from his face. "Too late," he said faintly.

CeCe stared down at him, confused, for a split second, and then it hit her too. "Holy shit."

"Oh God." Gunther crawled to his feet, batting CeCe's hand aside, and looked around frantically. His boxers and black jeans were crumpled together next to the desk; he picked them up and tried desperately to untangle them. "Oh God, oh God, oh God."

"Gunther," he heard CeCe say from behind him, but he wasn't looking, he wasn't looking, he was just going to put on his clothes, he was, oh God. "Gunther, whoa, calm down. It's all right."

"It's the exact opposite of all right," Gunther said, yanking harder. Something ripped. "This is the worst thing you can do where I'm from. My parents are going to kill me."

There was a bit of a pause. "Would it even help to remind you that you're twenty-one and they can't actually-"

"No," he said, then caught his own angry tone and frowned. He turned back to the bed-keeping his jeans carefully bunched up in front of him-and made himself smile at CeCe. "It's nice that you're trying, though."

She grinned back. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, sheet barely covering her lap, and the sun glinted off the gold necklace that lay on her bare chest and the ring she was playing with on her hand. He felt something twist hard in his chest. No. Bad. Okay. Okay. He shook the jeans, and they knocked a bunch of papers off the desk. He leaned down to pick them up.

He started to set everything back down and then stopped and grabbed the one on top back up again. "CeCe. CeCe!"

"What?"

He put on his boxers, turned around and clambered onto the bed, abandoning his jeans. "It's okay!"

"I told you it was-"

"No, it's really okay!" He kissed CeCe full on the mouth before shoving the paper in front of her confused face. "See?"

She looked down at it, shook her head hard, and then read it again. "We're-" Her voice went up a couple of octaves. "We're married?"

"Thank God," Gunther said, and collapsed on the bed next to CeCe. "I was so worried."

"You _were_ worried? Gunther, we got married at-at Elvis's Chapel O' Love and Rainbows. And you're fine with that?"

"What?" he asked. "Do you think it's too tacky?"

There was a long silence, and then the bed started shaking. Gunther lifted his head. CeCe was bent almost double, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Probably laughter. He reached up and put his hand on her back, rubbing it a little. "CeCe?"

"Move over," she said, and flopped down next to Gunther. "Okay. Okay. I'm pretty fuzzy on most of last night, so help me out here, sober sister. How did we end up getting m-married?"

"Well." Gunther stared up at the ceiling. "I think we were-no, we-uh."

"You don't remember either?"

"I remember we had dinner," Gunther said slowly. "And then you said since I was twenty-one I should learn how to play poker too even though I probably have the worst poker face ever."

"Okay, yeah. Was I right?"

"What?"

"About your poker face?"

Gunther rolled his eyes. "I guess. Which is fine, since I don't actually gamble."

"But you did last night."

"Oh, Gunther, it's so good to see you again." CeCe had thrown both arms around him and hugged him so hard he nearly fell over. For once, he hadn't resisted or cut it short; he'd hugged her right back, and been the last to let go. Nobody ever hugged him like she did then, like she was sending a message from her body over to his. "Don't head back right away—you have time yet tonight, don't you? I have an idea-"

"Last night was different," he said.

"Okay." CeCe was silent for a while, staring up at the ceiling. "I don't like this. Not knowing," she added as Gunther froze next to her. "I'm not that kind of drinker."

"Well..." he said. "There was that night on the Shake It Up! tour with Rocky and Kyle and the roadies. And you weren't even of age then."

"Who told you about that?"

He smiled grimly. "Nobody. You threw up on my shoes while they were trying to drag you back to your bunk."

"Oh." Then, tentatively, "I'm not usually that kind of drinker? Anymore?"

Gunther snorted out a laugh.

They picked their way slowly through the evening: a table of their own in the VIP room. Hands of poker with an increasingly amused dealer. ("She agreed with you about my poker face." "I knew it.") Fans buying CeCe drinks.

"Which people do all the time," Gunther said. He was on his stomach on the bed, sheet pulled up to his waist. CeCe had pulled on her jeans and cropped shirt and was slouching against the headboard. She was still playing with her ring. Her wedding ring. Gunther didn't think she'd noticed yet.

"Yeah, but I don't usually get plastered from it." She frowned. "And you were just sitting there with your Sprite while I knocked 'em back?"

"And the juice," Gunther said, and immediately felt lame.

CeCe's eyebrows went up. "Juice? You ordered juice at a casino?"

"Somebody bought it for me!" He protested. He kicked at the sheet. "It was some specialty stuff. Cactus juice or something. I'd never had it before."

"What?" CeCe lurched forward. Gunther flinched backwards. "Cactus juice? You're sure?"

"I-I think so. What-" CeCe's face was a little scary. He sat up, bunching the sheet up into fistfuls at his waist. "What did I do?"

"Gunther, cactus juice is a kind of alcohol. It has tequila in it, and, I don't remember what all else. But definitely tequila."

"Oh-oh my g-oh." His voice kept creeping higher and higher.

CeCe inched forward on the bed and grabbed Gunther's shoulders. "Gunther?"

He laughed.

"…Gunther?" CeCe asked, grabbing him a little tighter.

He just kept laughing, gulping in air between whoops and shaking with them. Finally, he knocked himself off balance and fell forward onto CeCe, who fell backwards onto the bed.

"Oof!" She said, and then, "Gunther? Please stop laughing before you hurt yourself."

"Sorry," he wheezed, and tried to get himself under control. "Just-I got drunk and married in Vegas. Me!" He started laughing again, which was actually really uncomfortable because he was lying kind of crossways over CeCe, but he couldn't help it. "Nobody's going to believe this."

"Well, that'll make the divorce easier."

He thought about that for a minute. Then he wriggled around, folded his hands over CeCe's belly, and propped his head on them. "About that," he said, looking up through his eyelashes at her.

She stared back at him, clearly suspicious. "What about that?"

"Do we have to get a divorce-you know-right away?"

CeCe's expression went from suspicious to stunned. "What?"

Oh. CeCe didn't…oh. He stammered maybe two words out before his courage deserted him entirely. "Never mind," he muttered.

He started to roll away, but she grabbed his shoulders and held him in place. "Gunther Hessenheffer," she said slowly, "are you hitting on me?"

He couldn't help but feel a little bit hopeful. "Aren't you allowed to hit on someone you're married to?"

CeCe cracked up-like always-but she was kind of blushing, too, he noticed. "Words cannot express how flattered I am," she said, squeezing his shoulder, "but I'm going to have to say no."

Gunther gave a wistful thought to actual marriage, allowable, non-sinful sex, that he would, you know, remember all of the next morning, and then sighed. "All right. If you say so."

"I do."

"I can see you trying not to laugh." He climbed out of bed and dug for his jeans again.

That ripping sound from before had been his jeans. He sighed and pulled them on anyway. He was only a couple of floors away, it didn't matter. He turned around to find CeCe flat on the bed with a pillow over her face.

"Come on, we might as well get up," he said. She didn't move, except to mumble something into her pillow, so Gunther wandered over to the window. Now that he wasn't so distracted by everything else, he remembered that he was really, really thirsty. And possibly hungry, under the queasy feeling.

"Do you want to go get breakfast? Or I guess brunch, I don't really know what time-" He pulled the curtain open.

The flashbulbs went off like lightning, illuminating most of the room, including CeCe, who had just sat up. In bed. And Gunther standing there, half-naked.

He yanked the curtain shut belatedly.

He and CeCe stared at each other for a couple of seconds. Then Gunther said timidly, "Um...so that might be a problem, huh?"

She gave him an incredulous look. "That one guy at TMZ is probably having an orgasm as we speak, and it might be a problem?"

"Well," Gunther said, stung, "at least we're married!"

Cook flopped down and grabbed for the pillow again. "Wake me up when the publicists call."


	2. Chapter 2

Gunther hung up the phone and set it down on the table very gently. He looked over to the bathroom CeCe had disappeared into when the phones had started ringing. "CeCe?"

"Come on in, I'm just hiding."

Gunther looked around the empty hotel room and stuck his head into the bathroom. "What?"

"Metaphorically speaking." CeCe looked up from where she was staring at her wedding ring. She was lying on some sort of little bench thing, and, okay, if you were going to hide from nothing in a bathroom, this was the one to do it in. It was bigger than the living room Gunther'd had growing up, and it had two closets, a big glass cube of a shower, and a sunken hot tub thing with a couple of bottles of bubble stuff lying empty next to it. He was hoping CeCe wouldn't ask if he remembered what had happened to them.

"Um. Okay." He stepped into the room, tugging at the edge of his T-shirt. "How did it go with Robert?" Robert was CeCe's publicist this year-she burned through them pretty quickly for some reason.

"Fine," she said in a tone of voice that meant the opposite. "He's on his way out."

"Mine is too."

"How did Suzanne take it?"

He was pretty sure she'd been crying when he hung up. "Fine," he said.

"What does she want you to do?"

"'Stay right here, don't move, and don't get photographed by so much as a security camera,'" Gunther recited.

CeCe let out a long sigh. "Ditto."

Gunther noticed another bench by the shower; he dragged it closer to CeCe and sat down on it.

"So what are we going to do?" CeCe asked.

"What?"

"We have to come up with a plan of some kind. Otherwise when Robert and Suzanne get here, they'll decide for us."

"Right, that's no good," said Gunther, who'd just been vaguely relieved at that very thought. "What are we-I mean, I don't really know-"

"What are our options?" CeCe asked. She sat up as Gunther nodded. "Okay, well. We could go ahead and get divorced, but I have a feeling we'll piss off, like, everyone who's ever managed us if we do. I can hear the Britney Spears comparisons now…you do remember that, right?"

"Of course I do."

"You are freakishly Zen about this," CeCe said once she'd recovered. "It's kind of wigging me out."

Gunther spread his arms wide. "I didn't do anything wrong! I mean, maybe dumb, but not wrong."

"Sodomy's not a sin anymore?"

He flinched, but he looked her square in the eye. "We're married," he said.

She leaned forward. "Gunther, you understand that a lot of people are still going to freak out. I mean, your fans-"

"I didn't do anything wrong," he repeated, a little faster, a little angrier. "We got married. We didn't-"

"Okay, okay," CeCe said, and it wasn't until she moved over to sit next to him and put an arm around his back that he realized there were tears burning at the back of his eyes.

"Look," he said, staring at the wall across the way, "I know you think I'm weird, and naive, and that I don't-you know, that I'm not really smart about what's going on in the world-"

"Whoa, whoa," CeCe said, rubbing his back, but he shook his head at her.

"-But I know, I know my fans and my friends and my, my family," oh God, "are going to be mad at me, and you're cooler than me but it's probably not good for you either, I know, I do," and why had he ever laughed at this, this was the opposite of funny, this was really bad, and it was all his fault and-

"Gunther. Gunther. Gunther."

He whipped his head around to stare at CeCe.

She tapped him on the back. "Breathe."

He sucked in a wheezy breath.

He still wasn't crying. He tried another breath, and that was a little better.

"So, not entirely Zen," she said, wrapping both arms around him.

"We're married," Gunther said, conscious of how stupid he sounded. But it was all he had to hold on to. He rested his head against CeCe's shoulder.

"I think you've come up with our plan, Gunther," she said.

"I did?"

"Yep." CeCe slapped his shoulder. "Our plan is to be married. I mean, no apologies, no excuses. We're just going to rock the fuck out of wedded bliss, until, whatever, people stop paying attention, and we know the divorce will be just a one-day wonder. Okay?"

"Okay." He ignored all the parts of him that wanted to ask questions or still worry.

CeCe sighed a little and leaned into Gunther. "Hey, is that bubble bath? What's it doing th-"

"We still didn't eat." Gunther popped to his feet, ignoring the hangover head rush. He narrowly missed taking CeCe out by the chin as he went. "Oops, sorry. Come on, if we don't eat we'll pass out and they'll get more crazy pictures. Do you think 'don't move' included 'don't order room service?' Should we just try the minibar?"

She shot him a look, but she got up and followed him. "Minibar. Come on, I saw a Snickers in there when I checked in."


	3. Chapter 3

The backstage area was crammed with people-dancers, singers, crew, people carrying instrument cases, people gesturing with clipboards. The speaker system above piped in the current performance, as well as backstage announcements: _Season Six cast_ , _places_. _Next group, seven minutes._

"Brother twin!" Tinka threw her arms around Gunther from behind. "How are you?"

He patted her hand absently. "Shh."

"What?"

He pointed down the hall, where CeCe was wedged into a corner, listening intently to a cell phone.

"Yes, ma'am. Absolutely...yes, ma'am," they heard faintly.

"Is she talking to mom?"

"Yes-oh my goat, stop giggling." Gunther sighed. "Why is that funny?"

"It's not so much funny as cute."

He had no idea what to say to that. Fortunately, CeCe hung up the phone and started walking toward them just then.

"Hey, Tinka," she said, leaning across Gunther to give her a small hug.

"How was my mom?" Gunther asked.

CeCe smiled big at him. "She sure loves you a lot."

He winced. "Sorry?"

Tinka giggled again.

"Isn't it time for places?" Gunther asked, not at all desperately.

But of course they had to run the gauntlet of all their friends, too, even though everyone had had all day at rehearsal to stare at them and tease them and pull them aside to try and ask them questions they didn't want to answer. CeCe was starting to look apprehensive every time Rocky came near her.

"I will never forgive you, you know," she was saying to CeCe, who responded by inching closer to Gunther as they walked together. "I've been planning your bachelorette party for years, and now you rob me of it?"

"What's that?" Gunther whispered to Ty, just as Rocky offered to throw CeCe a belated one.

"Take you out, have some drinks-"

"It's exactly what you think it is," Ty said.

"-a hot male stripper or two, no problem-"

"No!" Gunther said loudly enough that both Ty and CeCe jerked to a stop. Rocky swiveled around and stared at him, confused. "I mean...no. Thank you."

Rocky was still staring at him, and Gunther was in the middle of turning bright red when he felt CeCe's left hand close around his right.

"My better half has spoken," she said cheerfully. "Maybe just a big party after the show? You can throw us a wedding reception instead."

 _CeCe Jones, Gunther Hessenheffer-_

CeCe was leading Gunther away before the announcement had even finished.


	4. Chapter 4

Gunther stood on the stage in the blackness, one earpiece out, listening anxiously to the murmur of the crowd as the announcer worked through CeCe's introduction. Were they louder than usual? Were they getting ready to boo? But the spotlight came up on CeCe, and all he heard was screaming.

She gave them a few seconds to quiet down and then raised her mike. "Hey, everybody."

More screaming. Gunther smiled a little.

"I don't know if you all heard, but it's been a very exciting week for some of us in Vegas."

"Say it ain't so!" some smart aleck yelled.

"Yep, I got married," CeCe said, and the wave of sound from the audience was deafening. Gunther couldn't even really tell what kind of reaction CeCe was getting.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, raising her voice and cutting right over them, "my husband, Gunther Hessenheffer."

His spot came on, and he walked over to stand beside CeCe-how, he wasn't sure, since he couldn't actually feel his feet. The wall of noise continued to batter at them. He lifted his hand to wave out into the audience-just a sea of movement and flashing lights-and saw the glint of CeCe's wedding band as she did the same.

"You ready?" CeCe asked, tilting the mike away. She had an earpiece out, too, Gunther noticed.

He let out a deep breath and smiled back. "Oh, sure. Dancing is the easy part."

CeCe laughed. "All right, then." She reached out and snagged Gunther's earpiece and tucked it back into place.

Following the dance the audience erupted again. Gunther moved his feet slowly and looked out. The spotlight extended out far enough that he could see the line of girls making up the front row; several of them were sobbing openly, he realized, alarmed.

CeCe crossed the stage to him. Something alerted him at the last second, and he tilted his face down as CeCe kissed him.

It all happened in, in this mash of details-her manicured nails digging into the small of his back, the still-shock of CeCe's tongue in his mouth, his thumb sliding across her cheek, the way she kissed the corner of his mouth before she took a step back.

They stared at each other as the spotlights faded to black.


	5. Chapter 5

CeCe didn't like having unnecessary strangers in her house, and besides most of Gunther's furniture belonged to his apartment, so it was just the two of them and their assistants moving his stuff in.

"Sorry about this," Gunther said to Karen as he handed her a box of CDs.

She laughed and shook her head. "Does CeCe apologize for asking you to do stuff, too?" she called across to Lanie, who was wrangling a garbage bag of clothes out of the van.

"Sometimes," Lanie answered back. She was tall and freckled and had blonde pigtails, the complete opposite of Karen, who was tiny and Korean and much, much bossier. "You'd think they'd be better at being celebrities by now."

Gunther shook his head and ran forward to hold the front door for Karen.

"How was your trip home?" she asked as they walked up the stairs.

He looked over the railing at the living room down below. CeCe's guitar was (that he wasn't even aware she played) leaning next to the fireplace, and he could see the top of CeCe's head disappearing into the kitchen as she took in the box of weird spices and things Gunther's mom had given him for his apartment three years ago. "It was okay," he told Karen. "You know, everyone was-was surprised, but at least they know CeCe."

He didn't mention the agonizing talks with his parents, separately and together, where he'd tried to lie as little as possible but as convincingly as possible, too.

Karen was looking kind of dubious. He made himself smile at her. "CeCe's family was exactly the same when we went there. I guess it takes some getting used to."

"You're telling me," she said, and he sighed a little to himself. But then she surprised him by saying, "You guys are terribly cute together, though. It's surprising at first, but not after you think about it for a while."

He nodded, eyes on the floor. "Thank you."

"""""""

"I think that's it," CeCe said, pulling her head out of the back of the van. "Nicely done."

"Thanks again," Gunther said to Karen and Lanie, who smiled back at him with identical cheerfulness.

"I'll wait for the cleaners at your place, and turn in the keys," Karen said.

"And I'll take the van back." Lanie jiggled the keys in her hand.

"Your job is cooler than mine," Karen said with an artistic sigh.

CeCe waved her down as she started to walk past her down the driveway. "Wait!"

"Did I forget something?" Gunther asked.

CeCe gestured at the house; Gunther followed her pointing finger up. And up and up. CeCe's house was kind of ordinary considering she was basically a millionaire, but it was still probably seven times bigger than anywhere Gunther had lived before.

He looked back at CeCe, who was still pointing somewhere just over his shoulder. "I don't get it."

She sighed, then handed Karen a camera and walked up to Gunther.

"Oh, wait," Gunther said, backing up a step. He looked automatically for paparazzi, but CeCe's driveway and yard were fenced and landscaped to a T, and nobody could see in.

"It's tradition."

He stopped and accepted his fate.

For all of the evil expression on her face, CeCe didn't actually make him pick her up all bride-like. She just grabbed Gunther in a bear hug.

"I got it!" Karen called. "Wow, that's just adorable."

He was getting used to how this whole thing worked, and wasn't even surprised when CeCe leaned up to kiss him.

She let go of him, and he wondered for a split second if CeCe ever wanted to keep kissing him when she stopped. Then, like he did every time he thought that, he remembered CeCe naked in a hotel bed practically saying she didn't want to have sex with him again, and he answered his own question: no.

Maybe if CeCe remembered the sex-which Gunther still only did in bits and pieces, no matter how hard he tried-she would be more interested. Or, what if she was even less interested? He decided, again, that he wasn't going to think about this anymore.

"Okay," CeCe said, shutting the door behind the assistants finally and turning around. "Tell me the next item on the agenda is pizza."

"Shouldn't we move my stuff? It's still all sitting in your room."

"Yeah, are you sure you don't want-"

"CeCe, I am not kicking you out of your bedroom. There are a million other bedrooms in this house."

"Five."

He rolled his eyes.

"Okay, fine. Actually-" CeCe waved a finger at him. "I have an idea about that. But first, pizza."

Arguing about what to have on the pizza, and who was going to pay for it, and what drinks to order with it, distracted Gunther for a while, but over his second piece he finally admitted, "I wish there was just one person we weren't lying to."

CeCe looked up at him, extra intense all of a sudden. She'd started giving him that look a lot lately, and he didn't really know if he liked it or not. "There isn't one person we could tell without having to tell sixteen other people, too."

"I know. I know."

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while, and he was starting to feel like a total jerk for bringing it up at all, when CeCe said, "It'll get easier. It'll just-I'm sure we'll get used to it."

"I'm sure you're right," he said, ripping his pizza crust into little pieces. "We'll just give it time."

CeCe put another piece of pizza in his hand. "Yeah, give it a month, six weeks. It'll be old hat."


	6. Chapter 6

Gunther was stretched out on the couch, flipping pages in the dictionary, when the front door opened and shut. He quickly tossed the dictionary on the coffee table and picked up the book next to it.

"Hey there." CeCe walked into the room, stopping at the doorway to toe her sneakers off like always. Today she was wearing a red T-shirt with a black blazer over it, which probably meant she'd had an interview. "How was today?"

"Not bad," Gunther said. "I have a new move for you to check out."

"Awesome." CeCe crossed the living room to the couch and wriggled up until she was laying stomach-down across the back of it. Gunther braced himself against the cushions until the couch stopped shaking. One of these days it was going to tip over on CeCe for real, and Gunther was going to laugh at her the entire time he was dialing 911.

CeCe was looking at the back of Gunther's book, so he used the opportunity to sneak a look at her. Her hair looked like it had been fancy-messy that day (definitely an interview), but it was falling down into just regular-messy now. And she still had traces of lipstick on.

He took a deep breath, but all that got him was a lungful of perfume, hairspray, and peppermint. He dug his fingernails into the side of his leg and tried to look casual.

"Why are you reading about-" CeCe tilted her head to see the spine of the book. "About options and futures trading?"

"Oh, you know. I was reading this article about diversifying, and they suggested it. But it's incredibly complicated, and this book is just confusing me more."

"Did you ask Annie about it?" CeCe asked. Annie had been the financial advisor for both of them since the Shake It Up! days.

"I will, as soon as I understand what I'm asking her. What?" CeCe was smiling down at him all funny.

"What what? I didn't say anything."

"You looked-you know what, never mind." Gunther stuck the bookmark back into the completely unread page and tossed it down. "You want to see that move now or after dinner?"

"""""""

They ate dinner in the breakfast nook, trading bites of different kinds of sushi-CeCe's latest kick. Gunther was still fairly dubious about most of it, but he discovered he had a higher tolerance for wasabi than CeCe did, and after that it was pretty much a race to see who could stuff their face with the spicy stuff faster, and they ended up with rice all over both their faces and the floor.

"I think there might be actual steam coming out of my ears." Gunther drained his glass of milk.

"The milk…is still…cheating," CeCe said, pausing for either giggles or hiccups. It was hard to tell.

"I didn't make you drink wine," Gunther said reasonably. CeCe giggle-hiccupped again.

Gunther showed CeCe his new move and they argued about it while they cleaned up from the sushi. "It does not need a twist," Gunther insisted, grabbing a fork off the counter and shoving it into the dishwasher basket.

CeCe was scrubbing down the cutting board. "It always needs a twist. If you knew that, maybe you'd be the one with your own tour soon."

It was unfortunate for CeCe that there was a bowl full of rice right next to Gunther at that particular moment.

"""""""

Once they'd cleaned all the rice out of their hair, their clothes, and the crevices of every appliance in the kitchen, they abandoned the field of battle for the living room.

"We playing tonight?" Gunther asked casually.

"I don't know." CeCe eyed him over her second glass of wine. "You ready to lose? Again?"

"I'll take that chance."

"Oh, really?" CeCe grabbed the well-worn Scrabble box from the top of the bookshelf and tossed it onto the coffee table. "Bring it, Hessenheffer."

"Oh, I can bring it," Gunther said, and turned crimson when CeCe started choking on her wine. "Stop that."

Somewhere between CeCe's triple-letter, double-word score and Gunther's third failed challenge of the night, CeCe said casually, "So, two months tomorrow."

"Yeah," Gunther said, inching his two Es closer together. "You want to go out?"

"We should, don't you think?"

When he snuck a look, CeCe was taking a sip of wine. "Absolutely," he said, and looked back down.

"Awesome," she replied. "Hey, look, another triple."

Gunther glared at the dictionary.

""""""

"I still think you could use a twist," CeCe was saying as they climbed the stairs that night.

"Good night, CeCe," Gunther said, stopping in front of his door.

"Good night, Gunther," CeCe mimicked. She caught him up in a one-armed hug. "See you in the morning."

Gunther's "office" was two of CeCe's old guest bedrooms, with the wall between taken out and the most expensive futon known to man surrounded by bookshelves, a stereo system, and a desk. It still felt a little like sleeping in a dorm room, but he refused to tell CeCe that. She felt guilty enough about keeping the master bedroom, which was just ridiculous.

Gunther flipped the futon open and sat down on it for a second, looking at the picture of him and CeCe on his desk. Tinka had taken it at their "reception."

"Two months," he said softly. And then, "Shut up and go to bed, Gunther."

He pulled himself up and went to get his sheets and blankets.


End file.
